Dev Watch

Developers Sound Off on the State of JavaScript

Developer Sacha Greif recently ran his own online poll to gauge the current State of JavaScript 2016, garnering more than 9,000 responses.

The survey resulted in all kinds of information, which I plan on covering in more detail. First, though, I want to focus on the many quotes from the developers responding to the survey, provided by Greif along with the raw data. While such topic-specific data is valuable, sometimes the comments from developers themselves enhance that data.

For one thing, the quotes shed light on the emotions and opinions expressed by front-line developers who have to wrestle with JavaScript every day. As the popular post "How it feels to learn JavaScript in 2016" sardonically demonstrated, the JavaScript ecosystem can seem like a confusing mish-mash of different frameworks, technologies and approaches.

Here then, is a look at the current state of JavaScript, in the words of developers themselves, presented unedited, unabridged and all over the place, kind of like the language itself:

It seems JavaScript is going in two directions, where one is functional and the other one is object-oriented programming and Java-like syntax.

Stylus is underrated. Meteor is underrated. Redux is overrated.

Web development is an absolute nightmare. Far too much accidental complexity, needless instability of frameworks, and Node.js is just wrong.

I hate Angular with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

I love the direction JavaScript is moving in, but the amount of setup/complexity required to be able to use these features today is prohibitive.

In many ways, Javascript/CSS is moving along well; I'd just wish browsers kept up.

JavaScript is a horrible language that sent software development back to the dark ages. It has taken over 20 years to get this unruly abomination of a language to a useful and enjoyable state.

Polymer makes Angular irrelevant.

Writing JavaSript for almost 7 years. And it's a terrible programming language.

I'm doing Elm full-time now, and I can't see myself going back to a dynamic language, let alone one without a strong type system with inference.